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RAGS and RICHES
Posted Date: 15 Mar 2008
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Posted By: arunkumar Member Level: Gold
Rating:  Points: 2
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Amongst the departures from the poverty metaphor: there’s no vicious cycle, as in poorbeget-poor-who’ll-remain-poor. Second, in the spirit of the network itself, connectivity can spread once the push is given. Third, education can come to the rescue actively and quickly: teach them about the benefits of ICT, and they’ll do the rest. About a billion are connected to the Net, and the other 5.5 billion aren’t. So we head to nextbillion.
net, and find this: “Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Sell
him a cellular phone and give him the ability to sustain long-term income by efficiently marketing his fish at the highest price in the location where they are in greatest demand, simultaneously saving resources by ensuring no fish
markets get oversaturated.” This is literal: in a realworld
case study, when cellphones came to some Kerala fishermen, they were “able
to call associates while at sea to determine which market they should head
to, bringing local consumer prices for fish to a lower equilibrium over time… and bringing waste down to virtually zero.” Those fishermen don’t need a desktop with a 2 Mbps connection. For them, those cell phones have done it, and they shouldn’t be counted amongst the have-nots any more. This is what we’re
talking about—the need is to ICT-enable each person to the extent that he is sufficiently benefited. Seen this way, the Divide doesn’t exist in the manner it’s been defined. Such steps are being taken as you read, in places as diverse as rural America and urban Nigeria. The good thing is, “wiredness” spreads quickly: you wire up one village, and ten others see how nice it is to be wired. That’s quite the future: local initiatives like the above, and global
ones like the OLPC (one laptop per child) programme,working towards universal connectivity that can only be asymptotically approached.No, is that quite it? We’ll contradict ourselves just that wee bit: Africans accounted for 1 per cent
of the Internet population in 2001. Looking at trends—such as Chinese folks getting online more and more—Africans will probably account for, oh, 3 per cent in 2010. And worse, if in 2010 you’re talking about real broadband access, Africans will still account for 1 per cent of world broadband connections.
The status quo will be maintained—at least for a good while to come. In the end, it is indeed like money. Some willhave, some will not. Some will boast, some will envy. Some will bask, some will hanker.So here’s the boring, sad part, about the haves and the have-nots, about those in need, those you don’t care about… but wait;we can make it more interesting than that. Let’s look at what “The Digital Divide” means, leaving ourselves open to fair interpretation.
Here’s a definition from an Australian government Web site: it is “the lack of access to information and communications technologies by segments of the community. The digital divide is a generic term used to describe this lack
of access due to linguistic, economic, educational, social and geographic reasons.” The Divide itself knows no barriers.From the Web site of San Diego State University:“You don’t have to look far from SDSU, where everything from dorms to dining halls have high-speed Web access, to see the proximity and
depth of the Digital Divide. In nearby City Heights, barely two miles from campus, only 20 per cent of residents are connected to the Internet.”
Let’s actually ask: does something we can call the Divide exist?
We’re supposed to be on the good side of it, those creating and reading this magazine. But install certain P2Pclients and they’ll ask you to select your
speed: “Slow (below 1 Mbps) or Fast (above 1 Mbps).” There it hits you in the
face: you’re not that well off after all. We’re pushing at the point of gradation. We’re saying there’s no strict this-side-and-thatside. It’s all around us—like poverty, and all those things like envy and philanthropy that poverty touches at. Some are richer, some are poorer, butthere is a sweet spot somewhere, which we can define thus: if Information and Communication Technology has not touched someone’s life sufficiently— the way it has touched us and insofar as we are the better for it—that someone is on the other side of the Divide. Adopting the poverty metaphor, the Divide is like poverty in some ways, and is not in some other ways. How is it like poverty? Well, for one,
philanthropists and NGOs are called upon to bridge it. Governments are urged to work in that direction. Also think local agencies and governments, public/private partnerships, and worldwide initiatives (like Microsoft’s $3 software- for-students). Then, people on the happy side just don’t care enough. Fourth, there’s the direct connection with poverty: some people still cannot afford a cell phone. And then, money cannot be blindly thrown at the
problem—which doesn’t happen to be welldefined in the first place—you can’t donate Rs100 to “bridge the Digital Divide in India,” on
any Web site.
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